It is more important to ask “why and how” rather than being content with “what”. But, unfortunately, we Indians are generally obsessed with “what”. The challenge of a teacher/mentor is to ignite bright minds; to stimulate them. A mentor must be kind, considerate, observant, thoughtful, and after all, enthusiastically responsive.

Science in general and mathematics in particular is for creative thinkers. One must give total freedom to researchers to choose his or her area of research. Science, including mathematics, has always produced and will continue to produce useful work if the creative thinkers are given complete freedom.

The social worlds of mentor and mentee structure the power via so-called modernized educational institutions. The traditional knowledge system was also based on the power and hierarchy of caste. Though public educational institutions are valorized for its power to overcome caste-based conflict and education (Beteille 2006:174), the contradicting forms of powers related to caste and education function in two ways.

The problems in mentor-mentee relationship in our society has been discussed from an experience based approach. Mentors should become special friends to the mentees and might eventually rise to the level of friend, philosopher and guide. However, all seeds do not make big trees. So, a friend plus position for the period of cooperation is good enough. Mentor and mentees may be close in age like classmates or they may have age gap of one or two generations. Mentees like to see mentors to be slightly advanced co-thinker of the problems faced by them.

The key to success is for the mentor to be extremely generous to ensure that the mentee has all the support (s)he needs for his/her research. This includes ensuring a hassle-free research environment, administrative support and access to resources (including papers, talks and visits to conferences). Given the uncertainties in research, it is important that the mentee is guaranteed such support during his/her first few years.

I abhor the practice in which a guide is assigned to a student immediately on entering the graduate school and the guide looses no time in proposing a problem – something that unfortunately happens all too often in our universities.

A mentor-mentee relationship is a crucial one in the professional lives of both the persons. It has to be handled with utmost care and sensitivity.